East (European) Enders are headed for your TV

Polish soap: Londynczycy focuses on the plight of Poles who come to the capital seeking a better life

A POLISH soap depicting immigrant life in London could soon be on British television screens.

Londynczycy, Polish for Londoners, is the country's answer to EastEnders, and tackles the difficulties faced by hundreds of thousands of Poles who come to England to seek a fortune.

The much-hyped show will be broadcast for the first time tomorrow in Poland and its producers are hoping a British television channel will snap the programme up.

It is the country's first screened attempt to tackle the exodus of bright young Poles to Britain who often end up working in menial jobs for which they are vastly over-qualified.

Much of the filming was done in London, with plot lines drawn from real-life stories told to writers by a group of Poles living in Finchley.

The series features leading Polish actors including Robert Wieckiewicz who plays Marcin, a history teacher who follows his wife and son to England but struggles to get a job and ends up drinking on park benches.

Grazyna Barszczewska, Poland's answer to Helen Mirren, plays a woman who arrived in London during the Second World War and makes a living by renting cheap rooms to her countrymen.

The drama also follows the fortunes of Darek, a 30-year-old Polish builder who lives in Ealing being worked to the bone by his demanding boss, and Mariola a blonde 25-year-old who arrives in the capital with two goals: to become a star and marry a rich Englishman.

With a relatively huge budget of 13.5 million zlotys (£3 million), the series features numerous shots of Wembley stadium, the London Eye and the Southbank Centre, as well as less glamorous shots of Victoria bus station and a Polish delicatessen.

Half of the dialogue is in English, which will help the chances of production company Twilight Films, based in Ealing Studios, to sell the show here.

Andrzej Szajna, London-based producer of the series, said it was not an advert for Britain, but that it did paint a favourable picture of Britons.

He said: "All the scenarios are based on true stories. The baddies are all Poles. It is Polish people screwing over other Poles, which is so often the case in real life.

"There is one scene where there is a girl looking at adverts in a shop window, and a few other Poles come up and say they can help her find a good job in return for £100. You hear stories like that all the time."

Ewa Manthey, 22, a Pole living in London, said the series was an accurate description of London life for a lot of Polish immigrants.

She said: "I left Poland in 2005 to seek a new life in Great Britain. Poles in London are just like the characters shown in the series.

"The majority of Polish migrants tend to be very naive and immature, used to a different life."